Transportation
Blog
Read about CA's war on suburbs
To reduce costs, California also needs to build new suburbs
The three myths that have led to this predicament are the following: Nuclear power and natural gas power causes unacceptable harm to the environment; reservoirs and desalination plants cause unacceptable harm to the environment; and single-family homes nestled in sprawling suburbs cause unacceptable harm to the environment. These are myths. ...
Free Cities
Marc Joffe – How can California transportation policy better serve customers?
Transportation expert Marc Joffe of the Cato Institute joins Steven Greenhut of PRI’s Free Cities Center for a discussion of how to transform transportation policy in California to better serve customers and focus on transportation engineering rather than social engineering. They also discuss the current state budget debate over a ...
Free Cities
Latest Free Cities Center video
Watch: How can California transportation policy better serve customers?
Watch transportation expert Marc Joffe of the Cato Institute tour the Walnut Creek BART station with Steven Greenhut of PRI’s Free Cities Center. They discuss how to transform transportation policy in California to better serve customers and focus on transportation engineering rather than social engineering.
Blog
Read excerpt from new Free Cities Center book
Providing us with the transportation that planners want
One need only spend a little time on a transit-oriented social-media page or reading the thoughts of urban-focused writers to detect a certain disdain toward the automobile, suburbia and the construction of road and freeway lanes. Such attitudes are not outliers, as any quick search of New Urbanist and pro-transit ...
Blog
Read latest on state's misguided transportation priorities
‘Induced demand’ a poor excuse not to build highways
Economists are known for different worldviews from others, and the gap usually is wide between economists and urban planners. Economist Thomas Sowell famously has said, “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs,” thinking that most planners reject out of hand. One contentious issue separating economists (or at least those that believe ...
Blog
Read the latest on road diets
Bicycle ridership declining even in bike-friendly Portland
According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the share of Portland employees riding bicycles to work peaked at 7.2 percent in 2014. By 2019, it had fallen to 5.2 percent. The pandemic led to a surge in bicycle sales, and the share grew to 5.4 percent in 2020 but ...
Blog
California’s Train Drain
It’s an interesting question: Will California’s high-speed rail make its first run before BART trains make their last? Actually, it’s a tricky question. The bullet train might never run. We’ve chronicled the troubles that have bedeviled the high-speed rail project, most recently when we reported on its financial problems. The ...
Blog
War on cars is a war on lower-income Californians
Recent research focusing on Los Angeles finds that the city’s poorest neighborhoods have the largest percentage of “hyper-commuters” – people who commute 90 minutes or more one way to work. The preponderance of those long-distance commuters – often construction workers and laborers who drive from inner-city Los Angeles to far-flung ...
Blog
Private Sector High Speed Rail Moves Forward While State Bullet Train Cost Estimates Climb
It has been called a dud, the train that couldn’t, a train that went off the rails, a train wreck, the train to nowhere, and a crazy train. The high-speed rail is also a financial fiasco, its cost now almost four times the initial estimate Californians based their votes on ...
Blog
Mass transit in America: Pipedream or possibility?
A few years ago, when I taught at a university for a term in China, we lived in Changsha, a city of 7.5 million people. Because we didn’t have a car, we depended upon public transportation to get away from our campus and shop downtown. Especially attractive was the gleaming ...
Read about CA's war on suburbs
To reduce costs, California also needs to build new suburbs
The three myths that have led to this predicament are the following: Nuclear power and natural gas power causes unacceptable harm to the environment; reservoirs and desalination plants cause unacceptable harm to the environment; and single-family homes nestled in sprawling suburbs cause unacceptable harm to the environment. These are myths. ...
Marc Joffe – How can California transportation policy better serve customers?
Transportation expert Marc Joffe of the Cato Institute joins Steven Greenhut of PRI’s Free Cities Center for a discussion of how to transform transportation policy in California to better serve customers and focus on transportation engineering rather than social engineering. They also discuss the current state budget debate over a ...
Latest Free Cities Center video
Watch: How can California transportation policy better serve customers?
Watch transportation expert Marc Joffe of the Cato Institute tour the Walnut Creek BART station with Steven Greenhut of PRI’s Free Cities Center. They discuss how to transform transportation policy in California to better serve customers and focus on transportation engineering rather than social engineering.
Read excerpt from new Free Cities Center book
Providing us with the transportation that planners want
One need only spend a little time on a transit-oriented social-media page or reading the thoughts of urban-focused writers to detect a certain disdain toward the automobile, suburbia and the construction of road and freeway lanes. Such attitudes are not outliers, as any quick search of New Urbanist and pro-transit ...
Read latest on state's misguided transportation priorities
‘Induced demand’ a poor excuse not to build highways
Economists are known for different worldviews from others, and the gap usually is wide between economists and urban planners. Economist Thomas Sowell famously has said, “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs,” thinking that most planners reject out of hand. One contentious issue separating economists (or at least those that believe ...
Read the latest on road diets
Bicycle ridership declining even in bike-friendly Portland
According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the share of Portland employees riding bicycles to work peaked at 7.2 percent in 2014. By 2019, it had fallen to 5.2 percent. The pandemic led to a surge in bicycle sales, and the share grew to 5.4 percent in 2020 but ...
California’s Train Drain
It’s an interesting question: Will California’s high-speed rail make its first run before BART trains make their last? Actually, it’s a tricky question. The bullet train might never run. We’ve chronicled the troubles that have bedeviled the high-speed rail project, most recently when we reported on its financial problems. The ...
War on cars is a war on lower-income Californians
Recent research focusing on Los Angeles finds that the city’s poorest neighborhoods have the largest percentage of “hyper-commuters” – people who commute 90 minutes or more one way to work. The preponderance of those long-distance commuters – often construction workers and laborers who drive from inner-city Los Angeles to far-flung ...
Private Sector High Speed Rail Moves Forward While State Bullet Train Cost Estimates Climb
It has been called a dud, the train that couldn’t, a train that went off the rails, a train wreck, the train to nowhere, and a crazy train. The high-speed rail is also a financial fiasco, its cost now almost four times the initial estimate Californians based their votes on ...
Mass transit in America: Pipedream or possibility?
A few years ago, when I taught at a university for a term in China, we lived in Changsha, a city of 7.5 million people. Because we didn’t have a car, we depended upon public transportation to get away from our campus and shop downtown. Especially attractive was the gleaming ...
